Shobha had just seen Devi, seen the bandages on her wrists, the paleness of her skin, and it had horrified her. The image still had the ability to constrict her throat, choke her. So she tried to make it fade away, to somehow replace the pain with anger. Anger was easier to deal with, pain was so difficult, almost insurmountable, and Shobha always avoided the difficult.
“What? If I was a better sister she would not have gone and slit her wrists?” Shobha demanded icily. “Did you hear that, Girish? Now I'm to blame for my insane sister's insanity. How about genes, Mama? Maybe she got it from your father. He hung himself, didn't he?”
Saroj's eyes filled, and Shobha shook her head in disgust. “So it's okay when you blame me for Devi's suicide attempt, but when I say something, you have to get all teary-eyed. Don't you ever get tired of the double standard?”
“Stop it, Shobha,” Girish interceded and slowly let out a long breath. “We're all a little stressed, but it doesn't help to gouge each other's eyes out.”
Shobha wanted to respond with something catty, something so Shobha-like, but the image of Devi lying in a bloody bathtub sailed through her mind. And because that imagined image shook her up so much, Shobha decided to give her mother some leeway. She didn't have any children, but she knew that nothing could be as painful as seeing what Saroj had seen.
“I'm sorry, Mama,” Shobha said, which was a first. Shobha never apologized, never second-guessed herself, and never showed any weakness to anyone.
“She could've died. I had no choice but to drag her out ofthat bathtub,” Saroj said, now indulging merrily in large tears. Shobha considered yelling at her again. Saroj just couldn't help milking this for all it was worth. Even at this time, she wanted to make this about her, show how she was affected by it all.
But Shobha didn't believe she had any right to criticize; at leastSaroj saved Devi's life. The last time Shobha spoke to Devi was a week ago at their parents’ house and she'd told Devi that her life was a mess and not really worth living. It was said in the heat of the moment and Devi retorted right back with something about Shobha's useless and loveless marriage to Girish. It wasn't like Devi was washed in sacred milk or anything. She could give as good as she got. But Shobha could feel guilt eat at her insides despite all logical rationalizations.
After Saroj's panic-stricken phone call that morning, Shobha left work hurriedly and drove to Redwood City like an automaton. Parts of her brain simply wouldn't function. She couldn't even remember clearly what Saroj said. Disjointed words flashed in her head.
Devi slit her wrists.
In her bathtub.
Died.
Blood.
Even as she drove to Devi's house, Shobha knew that something was wrong. The rational Shobha was telling her that she had to go to the ER at Sequoia Hospital but she found herself stepping into Devi's town house all the same. The front door was open, and Shobha felt the first lick of fear race through her. What if she'd heard wrong? What if Devi was dead, lying in her bathtub here?
She sprinted up the stairs as panic set in. But before she could enter Devi's bedroom, a policewoman stopped her. “Ma'am, can I help you?”
Shobha looked past the policewoman. She could see blood streaming on the white-tiled bathroom floor from where she stood in the hallway. She couldn't see the bathtub, but bloody water was everywhere on the tiles.
“My sister,” she whispered, her throat hoarse, her eyes blank. “My sister lives here,” she finished shakily.
“Your sister's fine, she's stable. She's in the ER at Sequoia Hospital.” The policewoman led her downstairs, gently, putting a firm hand on Shobha's elbow. “Would you like a patrol car to take you there?”
Shobha was too stunned to register anything. There was acid in her throat, a rancid taste in her mouth, and she rushed to the kitchen and vomited her breakfast of Noah's bagel and cream cheese into the sink.
The policewoman gave her a few paper towels from the roll in Devi's kitchen and Shobha turned on the faucet to wet the towels.
“I'm okay,” Shobha said after she cleaned up and threw the paper towels in the trash. “I'm fine, thanks.”
“Are you sure?” the policewoman asked. “I can drop you off at the ER. It's close by. And your sister is doing just fine.”
“I can drive,” Shobha said, taking charge of her emotions again. “I can fucking drive,” she repeated but she was crying. “I can drive,” she said again as tears streamed down her face. She hadn't cried this openly in such a long time and because she hadn't, the intensity of it shook her into doing something she'd never done before. For the first time in her life, Shobha turned to someone for comfort. The policewoman held her for almost ten minutes while Shobha sobbed for her sister who could've died.
But when she stood in front of her mother and her husband, there was no trace of the Shobha who'd cried in the arms of a stranger. It was vital to her that she not lose control, not show a chink in the armor. Her sister was alive and well, there was no need for melodrama or tears.
“If everything is A-okay, then I'll head back to work. It's the end of the quarter. We have numbers to meet,” Shobha said casually.
“What?” Girish all but gasped, shock written on his face. It satisfied Shobha immensely that something she did finally needled him into a response.
Girish quickly replaced the visible temper and shock with his usual stoic, almost careless, calm. “Go,” he said easily, quietly. “Do you want anyone to call you if something happens?”
“What could happen?” Shobha shrugged. “It isn't like she's going to find another blade to do any damage. But please, do call if something does happen. And I'll see you all at dinner?”
Shobha didn't want to be the hard-ass all the time, but with Devi perpetually screwing up, the onus fell on Shobha to lead the exemplary life. It was Shobha's job to be the better daughter, while Devi was busy playing the role of the prodigal one. No matter what Shobha did, her father always favored Devi.
Most children believed their parents loved them all equally, but Shobha knew the truth. Avi cared more for Devi than he did her. She was well aware of it and spent many years trying to change that truth before giving up. But just because she wasn't in the race anymore didn't mean she liked to lose.
Avi never said or did anything to blatantly show he loved Devi more, but Shobha could feel it in his different attitudes toward them. He held Devi's hand all the time, through all her troubles, while assuming Shobha could take care of herself. And Shobha was proud that she could take care of herself, but would it kill her father to show her some attention as well?
Even now when she was married, living the successful life, her father turned to Devi, gave her support. Shobha once told Girish how she felt but he didn't see things her way.
“She's not strong like you, Shobha. That doesn't mean he loves her more, just that she needs him more,” Girish reasoned.
I need him, too, Shobha wanted to cry out. I want my daddy, too. Just because I'm strong doesn't mean I don't need a father.
But sometimes when you wore a mask for a very long time, it became your face. And Shobha had worn the mask of a strong woman for so long, no one, including her, bothered to look beneath it to see the fragile mess she was.
The hospital room reeked of cleaning supplies and the general medicine smell all hospitals emanate. There was a small buzzing sound coming from the outside, probably someone waxing the floor, though Devi wasn't sure ofthat. She could hardly hear anything beyond the voices of her family, which were loud and clear. She pretended she couldn't hear them and tried to concentrate on the buzzing from the outside instead.
There were a few facts she had to deal with despite the fuzz in her brain. The first, a hideous one: she was alive. And the second fact, worse than the first one, was she had been saved by her crazy mother. The irony ofthat was not lost upon her.
Damn it, if she was lying in her bathtub with her wrists cut to bits, it probably was because she wanted to be lying there the way she wa
s lying there. That was her wish and she had a right to do as she pleased in the privacy of her own bathroom. Anger and resentment congealed within her, and she had half a mind to open her eyes and give her mother a piece of her mind. Death was supposed to have happened. She had chosen to die, but now she was alive, a survivor. What exactly had she survived? How was she supposed to deal with the failure to end her life as well as the failure of not being able to live it with any dignity?
They were whispering for her benefit. Shobha, her sister, had been in the room a while ago, was angry about having to deal with this at the end of the quarter. She had work to do, and the last thing she wanted was to hang around her dotty little sister, but there was a tremor in Shobha's voice and Devi heard her sister's tears even if she couldn't see them. Shobha was angry, but she was also devastated, just as everyone else was.
Her grandmother Vasu was the only one whose feelings Devi couldn't surmise. Vasu hadn't spoken a word, though Devi knew she was there. She could smell the Ponds talcum powder, which only G'ma used. Besides, even if Devi was half dead she'd know the hand holding hers for the past few hours was her grandmother's.
But it was her mother who annoyed her the most at this point. That woman had to use her key again, had to use her key on just the day she wanted to complete the business of living. Of all the shit luck she'd had, this one took the cake and the baker.
“Mummy, I will sit with her,” Devi heard her mother say. Saroj had been in the room almost always, refusing to leave. When Devi heard her father tell Saroj to go home so that she could at least wash the blood off herself, Devi almost threw up. The jagged edge of adrenaline brought bitterness to her throat as she tried to forget yet again how Saroj saved her.
“No.” Devi heard her grandmother for the first time. “You sat here all night. And Saroj, it is okay if someone else takes charge for a little while.”
“This is not about who is in charge, this is about me wanting to be with my daughter,” Saroj said indignantly. There were times when she sounded young, not like a woman over fifty, but like a petulant teenager. This was one of those times. The petulance usually entered her voice when she was speaking with Vasu. It was when Vasu was around that Devi saw Saroj as a daughter instead of a mother.
“Can't you be with your daughter while I am in the room?” Vasu asked patiently.
“Of course I can,” Saroj said peevishly. “I am the one who saved her, you know?”
“And are you going to push that down the poor girl's throat for the rest of her life? If so, you would have done her a favor by letting her die,” Vasu retorted.
“How dare you, Mummy?” Now she really sounded like a little girl, especially the way she said Mummy. “Do you have any idea what I have been through? How hard this is for me? There was blood everywhere … all over the …” Saroj's voice hitched and Devi heard a loud sob.
Oh, Mama, she thought irritably, can't we do without the histrionics? Blood wasn't everywhere. It was only inside the bathtub.
Devi was neat, tidy to the T. When she settled on the blade as being the best way to end her life she also decided that the bedroom was out of the question. Even if she was dying, the idea of soaking her mattress or the floor with blood was intolerable. The bathtub, teeming with warm water, was the perfect solution. The water would keep her warm and keep the blood from congealing on anything. And at the end of the day, all the landlord would have to do to clean the mess would be to drain the water and use a brush in the tub. He wouldn't even have to use her deposit of two thousand dollars to clean up.
Devi thought she'd contained the damage the best she could, though now she wished she had blown her brains out instead. So what if there would've been pieces of brain matter splattered everywhere, she would at least be dead.
And if she were dead she would not have to listen to this scene. Devi didn't want to open her eyes, didn't want anyone to know she was awake, alive. As long as she kept her eyes closed, she could shut the world away and at least for another delusional moment pretend that the problems of her life didn't exist.
“Why did she do this?” Devi heard her mother again, speaking through a voice full of tears and agony. Devi had no doubt her mother loved her immensely, but she had come to the conclusion that she would never reconcile her notion of love to her mother's. This was going to be just one of those things that couldn't be resolved and if she'd died it wouldn't have mattered. All those things she wanted to escape would've been eliminated, but now that chance had eluded her.
The real world waited with questions.
She hummed a small tune in her mind, a toneless tune that she used when she was sad to keep thoughts from entering and leaving her brain.
Slowly Devi drifted into sleep, letting the sounds of her family and the music in her brain lull her to sleep.
Genetic Coding
It was a given, Devi was more like Vasu, and Shobha was more like Saroj. It was unshakable. Vasu sincerely believed in it, but now, as she sat by her granddaughter's side, she admitted that there were dark crevices in Devi's mind she knew nothing about.
She only thought she knew Devi, but Devi… ah, but Devi was her own person, unique, like no one else. Vasu admired her spirit, her courage to try the unknown, seek out the strange and the unusual. She wanted Devi to have inherited all those wonderful qualities from her. Now it looked like Devi was more like her suicidal ex-husband rather than herself, Vasu thought with a small laugh that quickly turned into a sob she needed to control.
The white bandages on Devi's wrists were evidence of Vasu's failure. On the surface, Vasu knew she could easily blame Saroj and her lack of compassion for this tragedy, but deep down Vasu knew that Saroj was not guilty. She knew inside her heart that Saroj stopped influencing Devi one way or the other, years ago.
Devi had been close to Vasu, had told her all the secrets, the first kiss, the first love, everything. Somehow Devi, who felt comfortable telling Vasu about her method of contraception, her years-older lover, had failed to mention her impending self-inflicted death sentence.
Oh, her heart hurt. Vasu put a hand against the pounding muscle inside her ribs. It was weak, maybe too weak to sustain this. Once again she stroked Devi's cool forehead and thanked God for sending Saroj in time to save Devi.
When her ex-husband, and he was always ex-husband, never just husband, killed himself, she'd felt myriad emotions, but they were a jumble. There was sorrow among the hate, the relief, the apathy, but it was buried, not like now, now there was only sorrow, gigantic, like the Himalayas, immovable. There was no comparison really.
Vasu married Ramakant because she was of marriageable age and his family proposed the arrangement. Then he worked in a bank and seemed normal. But once she started going to medical school, things went from bad to worse. Ramakant always reminded her that he was paying her way and how much money it was costing. He couldn't understand why she didn't want to just sit at home and be a housewife like every other woman he knew of. But Vasu had been determined. Even though she got pregnant in her final year of medical school, she persevered and didn't drop out as everyone expected her to.
Ramakant lost his job at the bank and Vasu joined the army. Her ex-husband never got over being fired from his job and made elaborate plans to sue the bank and/or steal from them. After that he started coming up with one get-rich-quick scheme after another. But it was when he started stealing money from home that Vasu decided to talk things out and tell Ramakant that he needed to start pulling his weight. The marriage that already hung precariously on mere legalities completely fell apart. The fights became intolerable. Ramakant would go away for weeks without telling Vasu and when he started hitting her, she decided enough was enough.
The divorce was a shock to Ramakant. He couldn't even imagine a woman would do something like this. But when the judge agreed with Vasu and gave her custody of Saroj, something seemed to snap completely in Ramakant. He threatened everyone, the judge, Vasu, even Saroj, and then moved in with his reluctant brother.
Vasu wasn't sure what happened there but just three months after the divorce Ramakant killed himself.
Ramakant's brother called Vasu in Jaipur, where she was posted, to give her the news. He'd been very sincere in his apologies and very honest about why he thought Vasu should not come for the death ceremonies. “It wouldn't be proper for an ex-wife to come for the puja.” Vasu assured him that she wouldn't want to even if it were proper.
Saroj hadn't subscribed to Vasu's notion in this matter, as she hadn't in so many others. She wanted to go for her father's funeral. She was just five years old, but precocious enough to hurt her mother by calling her a husband killer. Vasu couldn't believe her ears; her heart shattered and she began to slowly dislike her own child.
She'd always thought that mother and daughter were on the same team, fighting against Ramakant, whose moods changed like the weather did in Jaipur, from cold to hot, from pleasant to windy. There was yelling and screaming, even an incident with a butcher's knife and voices inside his head.
And most importantly, Ramakant was gone most of the time. He was always looking for a job, always coming up with a new scheme to make them rich. He never spent much time with Saroj, had no hand in raising her, yet Saroj thought of him as the “good” parent and Vasu as the bad one.
Saroj had blinders on, Vasu was convinced. She blamed Vasu for Ramakant's death. She held Vasu responsible for her father's tormented soul, as Saroj had heard from a friend that those who committed suicide got stuck in Trishanku—in limbo between heaven and hell.
Matters only got worse when Saroj started telling all her friends that her mother killed her father. Her friends told their parents and soon the entire army base at Jaipur knew that Captain Vasu Rao divorced her “good” husband, who then committed suicide. The few who'd known Ramakant were unable to stand against the advanced army rumor mill.
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